It's been five years since the World Stunt Riding Championship visited Merry Ole England, and to say the Brits have been starved for stunt spectacles since is an understatement. The last time the world's best two-wheeled "nutter bastards" gathered in England, the site was Mallory Park in the Midlands, and despite typically pissy English weather spectators back then turned up by the thousands to be entertained by the absolute best two-wheeled madmen, including Craig Jones, Sonnie Ferguson and a lanky Brazilian-by-way-of-Spain chap you may or may not have heard of named Antonio Carlos "AC" Farias. That people were still talking about this event years after the fact gives you an idea what an impression it made on British fans.
Fast forward five years and you can only imagine how eager fans were to welcome the world's best streetbike stunt riders back to the British Isles for the 2004 World Stunt Riding Championship-and for good reason. Five years later, the stunt scene is radically changed and loads more exciting. Gone are the days of carefully balanced 45-degree wheelies and perfectly straight rolling burnouts executed on pedestrian Honda CBR600s. Driven in large part by the unconventional, over-the-top antics born out of the burgeoning U.S. stunt scene, the '04 World Stunt Riding Campionship was a mad mix of high-speed combo wheelies, 100-meter-long endos and blazing rev-limiter burnouts ridden to the edge of the tire, not to mention jaw-dropping technical tricks such as no-handed and circle wheelies of every possible variation. Crazy stuff, in other words, that the crowd five years back would have never believed possible.
This year's World Stunt Riding Championship was split into two separate rounds. The first round was held earlier this past year in the Czech Republic. Round 1 was ruled by defending World Stunt Riding Champion Christian Pfeiffer of Germany, who edged Portuguese stunter Humberto Ribeiro by five points to take the round. How hot were Pfeiffer and Ribeiro that day? So hot "untouchable" AC Farias could only manage third place against this dynamic duo.
Obviously, everyone was looking forward to another showdown between Ribeiro and Pfeiffer, but the addition of Tony D, newcomer to the world scene, provided an interesting twist. D'Orsi came to Donington on the tail end of a world tour of sorts to cap a year that saw him wowing crowds (and winning trophies) at the three-round International MotoFreestyle Championship in Australia in May and the massive Burns Day France in August. Word circulated around the paddock that D'Orsi had spent the six weeks separating Burns Day and the World Stunt Riding Championship on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, living and training with none other than the legend himself, AC Farias.
Everyone was expecting great things from D'Orsi, and the boy from Dirty Jerzey didn't disappoint. The top 12 finishers from Round 1 were automatically qualified for Round 2 in the U.K., but because D'Orsi was busting humps back in the States while the Euros were beating one another up in Round 1, D'Orsi had to qualify himself to compete at the U.K. event. Riding a shaggy CBR900RR Fireblade streetfighter borrowed from his buddy Farias and decked out in the official American stunt uniform of jeans, hoodie, full-face helmet, gloves and work boots, D'Orsi absolutely lit the place up with his entrance, blazing the main straight with a very high-speed, high-altitude gangster spreader that had the normally staid British crowd out of their seats. Despite a wet track (England-what do you expect?) and 130 hp on tap, D'Orsi wasn't slowing down for anything, throwing down one of the fastest and most manic sessions of the weekend to lock up the top qualifying spot, hands down-until the judges docked D'Orsi a full 50 points for "improper protective gear," which bumped him back to the fourth qualifying spot behind Hungary's Nagy Becman, Mattie Griffin of Ireland and eventual top qualifier, Finland's Joni Tammela.